


you give me miles and miles of mountains and I’ll ask for the sea

by mistrali



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aromantic Crowley, Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Demiromantic Aziraphale, Demisexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Misunderstandings, Rejection, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 17:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21461458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistrali/pseuds/mistrali
Summary: With thanks to NommeDePenne on discord for feedback.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 73
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens





	you give me miles and miles of mountains and I’ll ask for the sea

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to NommeDePenne on discord for feedback.

They’re at St James’s Park. It’s overcast and rainless, with wisps of sky peeking out through the cloud. Crowley‘s lobbing bits of courgette into the pond for the ducks, who are bobbing peacefully on the water, and sometimes agitatedly underneath it as the whim takes Crowley. When Aziraphale glowers, Crowley sets the ducks to rights and starts throwing bread rolls at a pair of nearby crows.

“My dear, what have birds ever done to you?” asks Aziraphale crisply, waving a hand. One of the crows dodges a roll and flies off with an indignant caw.

They meander their way towards an ice cream parlour, which is there both because of the weather and because Aziraphale has been expecting it. The waiter looks briefly bemused when they order, but it turns out they do have a batch of just those flavours, funnily enough, and won’t they have anything else, on the house. Crowley’s work, of course, but it’s Aziraphale’s generous tip that makes her beam at them.

Crowley wrinkles his nose. “You are disgusting, angel. I suppose she’ll get a pay rise, too.”

“Just a lucky scratchcard,” he tells Crowley sweetly. “But you do have the loveliest ideas.”

“Shut up,” snarls Crowley, and goes into a sulk that lasts until their drinks arrive; to Aziraphale’s surprise, he doesn’t try to invoke the almost-Apocalypse as a loophole to their rule about not interfering with each other’s targets. He supposes the Arrangement is still in place, then, after a fashion.

When Crowley wipes a trace of cappuccino froth from his lips, Aziraphale looks hurriedly down and starts to cut up his strawberry tart in consternation. He _can’t_ think about Crowley’s lips again, especially not when he might be tempted to stare. But the more he tries to avoid thinking of Crowley, the more his thoughts stray to him: the James Bond bullet holes on his car; the huge knit blankets he used to hoard in the London winter, before central heating; the way he’d never take credit for croquet; even the odious treatment of his plants, poor things. And there’s the way he looked that day at the airbase, wings unfurled, desperate but ready to do battle with that tyre iron against Satan Himself.

In the few weeks since then, Aziraphale’s feelings for Crowley have blossomed at an alarming rate. They mightn’t see each other again for five or six centuries; suddenly, even a fortnight seems far too long to wait. If there’s any chance that Crowley might reciprocate, he has to know: demons might not understand love, but lust is another story. But how to broach this? Better to start from the lust angle, and then ease into the rest.

“I’ve been thinking about sex,” he says at last, deliberately casual, taking a forkful of tart and a lick of his ice cream. It really is most excellent ice cream: dark and dense Black Forest studded with cherries and chocolate curls, not suited to the season. But all this Armageddon business has rather unsettled his nerves.

Predictably, Crowley splutters around his spoonful of tia maria. “You’ve what? What’s this apropos of? Have you been reading Anaïs Nin again?“

Aziraphale snorts. “Really, dear, I knew about sex before Anaïs. Lovely girl, but nothing humans haven’t been doing since the Harappans. No, I was just... curious,” he says, not entirely truthfully, but it seems to put Crowley at ease. “Now that we have a few years’ real reprieve, you know. It is technically my divinely ordained duty to look after humans.”

Crowley rolls his eyes. “Divinely ordained duty, my arse. You’re a blessed hedonist, angel - you just want to try it. I always thought your lot went in for the...” He waves his hands around, presumably to indicate cross-transfer of energies. 

Aziraphale makes a face. “Not on Earth. It’s too dangerous these days. It’d be right up your alley, in fact,” he says, grinning. “Mass mayhem, ticked-off humans and being roundly thwarted by an angel.”

“Up yours, too,” Crowley returns, deadpan. The retort’s spoiled by the flutter of his eyelids as Aziraphale offers him a tart. Wordlessly, he takes it.

“Crowley, don’t be vulgar. What do Downstairs do, then?” 

Crowley fidgets in his seat, lanky legs and snakeskin ‘shoes’ drumming against air, and nibbles at the tart. “Er... most of us don’t,” he admits. “We just make Efforts to keep up appearances.”

Aziraphale quirks a smile at him. “Oh, really? I would have thought... Below handles all the seductions and lust. Weren’t you ever curious?” There’s a little flutter in his stomach that he chooses not to interpret as jealousy. After all, business is business; if Crowley’s seduced some humans in his time, what of it?

“Nah. That was Asmodeus’ team. Nauseating stuff - flirting and Tinder and so forth. All I did was engineer the disco scene. You?” 

Aziraphale doesn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. As to his own activities, he maintains a dignified silence. That he might have indulged a trifle in the 1890s, at certain discreet gentleman’s clubs, is completely immaterial.

Crowley throws his head back and gives a full-throated laugh. “I knew it, you bastard.” 

“It was only the gavotte,” Aziraphale says peevishly. “In that gentleman’s club on Portland Place, if you must know.”

“C’mon, angel, only a dance? Or is that a euphemism?”

“No!” snaps Aziraphale, and turns away from Crowley to glare at the passers-by our of the window. A couple at the next table abandon their milkshakes and snog each other aggressively; Aziraphale isn’t certain if that’s his influence or just the fact that they’re teenagers, and therefore riddled with hormones.

“It’s a kissing dance,” he says more evenly, turning back to Crowley. “Nothing else.” Crowley is looking at him quizzically, as well he might.

“Angel,” he says, as though Aziraphale’s sanity is in question. “Did you think I’d actually care if you’d been to gay clubs or had sex with humans? Demon, remember? And last I checked, we’re more monogamous than your lot.” 

That’s true, thinks Aziraphale wryly. Most angels Above might make an occasion of their mingling, just as humans went to parties, but they mingled blissfully and indiscriminately, swimming towards and away from each other in a silvery current of angelfire, with partings as quick as greetings. It seems Hell turns a blind eye to the rare partnerships like Hastur’s and Ligur’s; but Heaven comes down on them like the proverbial ton of bricks. 

“No,” he says. “No, of course not. But we’re immortal beings, Crowley. We’re not supposed to get attached. To... er, humans.”

And it’s too corporeal, this thing Crowley brings out in him. Angels and demons shouldn’t be able to feel this heart-thrumming, shuddering desire for intimacy, this electric current that, in a human, would be pure hormones but in Aziraphale is some concoction of magic, some native terrestrial power that has lodged itself in the empty spaces where organs and glands should be. It’s as intoxicating, as dizzying, as Crowley’s favourite 1939 Penfolds. And, oh God, the glory of Crowley’s wings. Aziraphale hasn’t forgotten how they looked at the airfield: combed smooth, curving up over his head in a bright, glittering arc. Aziraphale wants to bury his face in them; he wants them curled around him as he sleeps. It makes him hot with embarrassment to think about.

The demon leans forward, and even though he can’t see behind the sunglasses he knows the intent, mischievous expression on Crowley’s face, knows it like he knows his own face in the mirror. “Angel,” he says, in a low voice. “We’ve been incorporated for nearly six thousand years. Who gives a shit what Above thinks? I’d like to see one of those archangels come down here and try not to go native. I’m surprised it’s taken you this long. Who is it, then?”

Plainly, Crowley doesn’t share his feelings. If the world had any sort of justice in it at all, he’d be - he’d be kissing Aziraphale right now. Instead he’s trying to cheer him up, even to reassure him.

Aziraphale thinks he might cry all of a sudden, and that - that wouldn’t do at all, since angels don’t have tear ducts. He shakes his head and tries for unruffled. It comes out high-pitched instead. “Oh, no - no one, yet. Just a notion of mine. We’re talking past each other, my dear.”

“No,” groans Crowley, “You’re talking in circles. Out with it.”

“We’re not meant to get attached to humans,” says Aziraphale instead, like a broken bloody gramophone record. “Or to other...” He takes a huge bite of his tart by way of prevarication. “Other occult or ethereal beings,” he says, when he’s finished chewing.

Crowley looks like he’s trying hard not to smile. “Aziraphale. Are you trying to tell me you’ve got an angelic... ah... whatever, Up There? Partner?”

Oh, Hell, he’ll have to spell it out. “My dear,” says Aziraphale, taking a deep, bracing breath, “I was talking about you. I wanted to try it together, if you’re willing.” Oh, well done, he thinks acidly. Not subtle at all. If that hasn’t queered the pitch, I’m Madam Tracy... 

“Right. Er. Not my style, but there’s humans who don’t mind that sort of thing. That medium, for instance. I could wangle something if you want.” 

No, Aziraphale wants to say. No, because against all logic I’ve been clean gone on you for the last century, and I’ll have to take myself off to the Sahara, or somewhere, for a century or so to get well shot of it. He wants to rage, but reminds himself that Crowley isn’t to blame. He’s a demon, after all. It’s hardly Crowley’s fault that he doesn’t grasp the quirks that have leaked into Aziraphale’s essence after aeons of incorporation.

“Oh, thank you,” he makes himself say, “Quite all right. I just thought I’d ask, you know. Upstairs might take a dim view of... wangling.”

He changes the subject after that, and they talk of other things. Leaving Crowley is like a dull ache, one he can’t shake no matter how he tries. 

As soon as he gets to his bookshop, he scribbles a memo to Upstairs about thwarting the demonic phenonenon of global warming. He doubts the archangels would trouble themselves to find out the real cause of climate change. Hopefully it sounds hellish enough to impress Gabriel, who’s back to his usual mock-genial self now that the almost-Apocalypse has been written off by both Heaven and Hell as a mutually embarrassing, human-orchestrated incident. In the ensuing chaos of placating all the angelic and demonic armies, he and Crowley have been spared any fallout and it seems to be business as usual.

His note to Crowley is vague, not evasive exactly, but implying an urgent mission that he couldn’t possibly miss on pain of demotion, so sorry, dear, Uriel’s in charge now and she’s decided to grow a conscience after all.

Then, before he loses his nerve, he miracles up a few academic qualifications, packs his bags with a click of his fingers, gathers the necessary power for the trip, and heads off to the Amazon.


End file.
